“When should you know the point?” by KatjaGrace

Talking to a friend today, she complained about someone wanting her help with a project when that person didn’t even know what the point of the project was.

Prima facie that does sound kind of objectionable. But is it?

People definitely do a lot of things without much explicit account of the point of each of them. For instance, many people go to university without taking a stance on whether it is primarily fulfills a learning function or a signaling function or an associating-with-elites function or or a getting the hell away from whatever they have been up to so far function.

It's not that people think of going to university as pointless, they just have a vague sense of it being good in some rich array of ways.

Are activities motivated in this way much less useful than ones done with a distinct purpose?

I doubt it. But it seems complicated.

I’d guess that if a person thinks explicitly about their purposes in university, they might make university-related choices somewhat better. For instance, if they clarify with themselves that a big component is meeting like-minded peers, that might change which courses they [...]

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First published:
June 30th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/XhrmcafXqFn3e6nd8/when-should-you-know-the-point

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.